EN EL ORDENAMIENTO LABORAL ESPAÑOL
6. INFORMACIÓN Y LA CONSULTA COMO MODELO ESTÁNDAR DE IMPLICACIÓN
Knowledge about the issue of postdoctoral career and development has been reported in numerous reports and projects (Adams, J. et al., 2005; Bryson, 1999; Campbell et al., 2003). Policy-makers saw this as a risk to the innovation system, with concerns about a potential decline in the supply chain (e.g. House of Commons Science and Technology Committee 2002 report) (Ackers & Gill, 2005).
that the Postdoc community experienced a lot of negative feelings regarding their career progression, access to professional development and issues of research contract:
contract research staff population [that] had become de-motivated, had poor self-awareness, lacked career planning and structure and had limited involvement in the School and University. (Lee, L. J. et al., 2010, p. 269).
This perception shifted institutional discussions about the Roberts agenda from a narrow focus on transferable skills and, as such, an agenda with limited symbolic capital, dissociated from the research process, to something much broader. Discussions started to encompass broader development, considering the research, social and academic capital of postdoctoral researchers and their hierarchical position within the institution.
One head of department in the Medical School decided to call an open meeting of the Postdoc community, to review the issues they faced and discuss what could be done to improve the situation. From these facilitated discussions emerged the desire to give a formal voice to the Postdoc community within the Medical School. This led to an agreement that a Postdoctoral society31 would be established. In addition, a dedicated Roberts-funded position was created to lead the development of a local, tailored programme of professional
development for postdoctoral researchers. A committee was also set up with an academic lead, departmental academic and postdoctoral representatives, as well as members from professional services. The committee established a programme based on the evaluation of skills perception, research outputs, aspiration and perception of the research environment. The intention was to set a baseline to benchmark any development and anchor the researcher
development strategy within a research-based framework (Lee, L. J. et al., 2010). This was a cutting-edge approach, as very few institutions reported establishing such a baseline. This became problematic later on, as institutions were challenged to measure the impact of the Roberts funding and most lacked early benchmarking data (Bromley, 2009; Hodge et al., 2010).
31 Group of Postdocs working together through formal or unformal entity in order to have a voice at departmental, faculty or university levels, in addition to offering social opportunities between researchers.
While initiatives for postdoctoral researchers were being initiated and led by senior academics in the Medical School, a grass-roots postdoctoral voice seemed to emerge in a couple of departments within my faculty, expressing a craving to see some change happen regarding professional and career
development. In 2007, the first Postdoc society (based in a biology department) was established in my faculty. It described itself as:
proactive in helping Postdocs make the most of their time in the X department. The society primarily aims to provide a resource for the interaction (social & scientific), training, education and support of postdoctoral staff. [described on webpage]
Throughout the course of its existence, the society has had a very strong focus on social events to provide opportunities for postdoctoral researchers to spend time together. Within my department, a Postdoc career development committee was set up in 2007, working with the departmental Postdoc society, which was just emerging. Although this committee was short-lived, suggestions were made to combine forces with the career development programme in place in the Medical School, to make the programme available to researchers from both departments. In order to address the interest and needs expressed by
researchers, I started working closely with the colleague appointed in the Medical School, initially just by disseminating information and making the Medical School programme available to researchers in my department, then from 2009 by organising workshops for researchers across the two faculties.
The Roberts activities were initially approached from the perspective of a deficit model about skills (e.g. we ran questionnaires asking researchers which skills they felt they were lacking and needed to acquire). At the time, the experience that postdoctoral researchers had of professional development was mostly based on generic training, delivered by the department of Human Resources to all university staff. Postdocs explained that they were looking for professional development framed within the research context, but also expressed that time constraints inhibited their possible engagement in professional development.
As an institutional agent, inspired by the work done in the Medical school and with Vitae initiatives helping support my own professional development, I took position in the field of postdoctoral research (without a formal institutional
mandate nor faculty/institutional strategy driving my endeavour). I initiated a faculty-wide researcher development programme in 2010, as I felt a real sense of connection to the Postdoc community, having experienced this type of position myself. While some HE commentators may want to believe that the 2008 Concordat influenced practices and policies in institutions, it did not at this stage, at least not within my faculty, but the availability of Roberts funding did, as it allowed me to initiate a programme for postdoctoral researchers. I took at face value that training and development interventions for postdoctoral
researchers mattered in supporting young researchers to navigate the turbulent waters of academic progression or negotiate transition to other pastures. I replicated the model set in the Medical School of having a faculty-wide
committee with academic and postdoctoral researcher representatives. It took time and effort to recruit representatives from all departments. The first meeting of this committee took place in February 2011. The Researcher Development Programme expanded over the years, continuing the collaboration with the Medical School coordinator and offering aspects of the programme to
researchers (not only Research Staff but also PhD students) from the 3 STEM faculties. The programme from the Medical School had extended to the entire faculty and developed a brand and a logo, incorporating elements developed and delivered across both faculties. The branded programme had been shortlisted for the Times Higher Education award. While these programmes were being developed across two faculties, three other faculties remained without dedicated coordinators. Colleagues from RIS had provided some input on focused projects, but no overall strategy and coordination had been realised. Postdocs from one of these faculties established, in 2011, a faculty-wide
Researcher Society.
By 2011, a national review on the implementation of the Roberts recommendations had taken place and considered:
The activities funded have come to represent a programme of major cultural change in the level of provision of skills and career support for researchers in UK Higher Education Institutions. (Hodge et al., 2010, p. 1) While this report of the national picture depicts a cultural change, such a shift still had to be embedded across the institution, instead of the localised
provision at the time within two faculties. Researcher development remained outside of institutional strategies, and points of reporting were unclear,
illustrating the lack of positioning of the researcher development agenda within the institutional structure. The researcher development programme seemed to exist in an institutional vacuum.
The Hodge report (2010) offers “fewer drivers for change” (p. 25) as an
explanation for the lag in the uptake of the agenda, with regard to postdoctoral researchers. Indeed, while access to funding for PhD studentships had required the doctoral field to comply with new demands from the funders (regarding integration of additional training programmes), research grants were still not tied with formal requirements forcing institutions to offer professional
developments for research staff. Hodge (2010), strangely, also places the responsibility on the side of the researchers:
the motivation for research staff to engage in skills training may be lower than that of PhD students; they are no longer students, and their
priorities tend to be on developing their deep specialism, achieving their project goals, publishing, teaching, finding further contracts and grants etc. (p. 25).
In this quote, researcher development, labelled as skills training, continues to appear somehow separate from research and academic activities and seems to portray the process of research socialisation as finalised at the end of the PhD. Furthermore, assumptions are made about the willingness and interest of researchers to engage.
It took the forthcoming end of the Roberts funding to embed researcher development activities across the institution. In 2012, a university review took place to address the legacy of Roberts initiatives, in view of the end of Roberts funding, and evaluate continuation of activities. It considered as essential the ring-fencing of institutional resources, in order to offer support to Research Staff and PhD students. Decisions were finally made by the university to formalise an institutional structure for the delivery of “good quality career development and training provision” [internal memo]. Although concerns had surfaced about the risk of losing positions and programmes with the end of Roberts funding provided by RCUK, the university, drawing on the work that had been shaped
by two science faculties, extended the model to the remaining faculties. While the Roberts positions had relied on soft Roberts funds, the new structure and positions were established as core positions, funded via PGR fees. By creating an institutional researcher development team with positions across all faculties, the Careers Service and RIS, an institutional researcher development agenda began to be formalised. It meant that the researcher development agenda started to belong to a diversity of stakeholders across the institution and had to be shaped by all actors. As agents shaping the institutional discourse,
researcher developers started to avoid the transferable skills labelling of
programmes, aware of the lack of capital it held within the academic community and enculturing the language used to describe activities to become more
salient.